Play It Safe with Video Driver Upgrades for Windows 7

If you’re not careful with your video driver upgrades, particularly those concerning the NVidia driver for GT8800, you could get into a lot of trouble when you have Windows 7 installed.

A Problem with Display
if you have the same PC system requirements – Windows 7 and NVidia driver – then you might have already encountered display problems. More to the point, you may have noticed that your windows have a hard time maintaining their position on 1 of two displays.

Another possible problem could be your dialogue boxes. Try to change their size and you’ll notice that your dialog box would ‘slide’ down your screen until it has completely sunk into your taskbar whenever you click on it.

A Problem with the Upgrade, Too
Like any normal PC user, you then resort to the upgrades offered by NVidia for Windows 7 users. Upgrades, after all, are designed to fix all such issues. The problem is, the upgrade you download might end up making your problem worse.

When you have the upgrade installed, there were no signs of errors. But don’t celebrate just yet because when you proceed to using your computer, you could end up experiencing the very undesirable BSOD or ‘blue screen of death’. This blue screen, with its white text explaining your present predicament, is virtually tantamount to your system crashing. Try rebooting your PC after this and if the BSOD still shows up then you should know that it’s your driver at fault.

Use Previous Video Driver
Don’t worry because there are various ways to cure your PC’s blue screen. Pull out the properties dialog box for your video driver. You’ll then see a button for ‘Roll Back Driver’. This comes with a helpful description of its function: if your most recent device driver update fails for whatever reason, clicking this button would allow you to forget about the new update and make use of a previously installed driver.

This is a very helpful option because its quick-fix solution will not affect the rest of the system. Only the update for the affected device will be changed; other device driver updates will be maintained.

Create a Restore Point
To play it more safely, you should also create a restore point with your computer’s System Restore Utility. It’s best to do this before allowing Windows Updates to run for Windows 7. Choose a particular function or activity as your restore point and your OS will go back to this point if you encounter similar problems in the future.

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